Decrepit
by InTheShadowOfSignificance
Summary: Spirits spin contracts from conversation: words into oaths, oaths into pacts. Once made they can never be broken...all that's left is to pay the price. Written for the lovely Bellamy Taft, warnings inside.


Disclaimer: I do not own Yugioh, nor do I claim rights to any of the affiliated characters.

Warnings/Notes: This AU takes place in Japan and follows the Japanese school year starting in April, meaning summer holiday spans from approximately July 20th through the last day of August. Rated for profanity, suggestive themes, reference to bodily injury and distress, and the injury and death of an animal.

Dedication: For a very dear friend and eternal inspiration. I don't know where I'd be without your love, compassion, brilliance, determination, and luminosity. Thank you for everything you do and are, Bellamy Taft.

Decrepit

* * *

 **June**

* * *

There's a ghost of a boy outside his classroom window, leaning against the east gate with his head tilted forlornly to the sky. Mokuba recognizes him the way he recognizes the symbols on the worksheet in front of him, vaguely and without sequence. He's thin, and coming from someone who followed his brother's growth spurt with none of his muscle mass, that's saying something.

It takes him three days to realize the figure, the ethereal opposite of a silhouette, has a head. Is a person. Exists.

He's been through enough in any six months of his life to qualify as crazy, glimpsing a spirit in the haze between daydreams is _almost_ as normal as breathing.

Between lengthy pre-calculus equations he mentally traces the outline of what he now knows to be the boy's hair. It's nearly as white as his skin against the blue stripes of his t-shirt. He stands at the same time, for the same hour – between two and three – every day, but the sun doesn't uncurl its fingers to touch him.

Another week goes by before he considers asking someone if they can see him too. Thin isn't an accurate word to describe this kid, though he is, morbidly so, the only thing Mokuba thinks comes close is skeletal. He's three floors up and half a schoolyard away, but he can see the withered remains of bone and sinew in vivid detail. When the boy bends his arm to sweep a hand through his hair, Mokuba imagines the joints rattling in their sockets, veins protruding like serpents under tissue-paper skin.

He's partway through shivering when the boy's head turns, and the chill sticks in place like a wave gathering ferocity on open water. In an instant Mokuba can assign color to his eyes, a name to his face, and he stumbles from the room looking at least half as sick as he feels. His teacher does nothing more than offer a nurse's pass through the now-ajar door.

"Bakura?" He calls hesitantly, managing to steady himself as he steps out into the heat.

There's a faint line of sweat on the boy's forehead when he turns to face him, angry, or maybe just startled at the sound of his name. As soon as he realizes who it is, it's like the harshness visibly eases from around his eyes.

"Mokuba? I haven't seen you in years."

 _I could say the same to you_ , he thinks, _except I remember you in better shape._

He smiles, awkward for only a moment, "You spend a lot of time down here." He says with a nod to the gate.

"Do I?" Bakura asks, dazed.

Mokuba's forehead wrinkles slightly with the frown, "I mean, for not going to school here anymore. How have you been?"

Ryou shrugs, the motion accentuating just how comically large his clothes are. The neckline of his shirt hits at the collarbone, jutting out on both sides, "The same as always, I suppose."

"Me too." Mokuba replies, feeling the conversation dying like Ryou seems to be, just a form, maybe not even a body anymore. "Are you waiting here for someone?" He wishes he had Seto's nerve so he could ask Ryou if he's sick, even though he knows better.

"Not particularly, but it's funny you should mention it. I like this spot, sometimes I convince myself there something waiting for _me_ here."

Ryou smiles like a liar who almost believes himself.

* * *

"You only want to take pre-calculus online?" Seto asks from the spot beside him on the couch. Mokuba answers the question he's really asking.

"It's my last class of the day and taking fifty minutes to do twenty minutes worth of work is stupid. I have better things to do with my afternoons."

Seto's smirk asks another lingering question, teasingly and without judgment, but he doesn't vocalize it. This time Mokuba doesn't answer out of consolation either.

"Okay kid, if it's really what you want."

"Thanks, Niisama."

Mokuba un-pauses the movie too quickly and Seto briefly considers fishing for more information. In the same, brief moment, he lets it go. Dealing with something as trivial as school was the last thing on his mind at Mokuba's age; an extra hour of free time at the end of the day is well-deserved, no matter what he uses it for.

The explosion on the screen dances across Mokuba's face as if manifesting in reality and Seto watches while the interest blooms.

It's taken too long to give Mokuba a normal life.

* * *

For five weeks, Mokuba spends afternoons edging on evenings with Ryou. If not for Misaki asking who "the new guy" is, he'd convince himself he's imagining their every conversation. They seldom leave the gate, never leave the schoolyard, and always wind up on one of the old, wooden benches that weren't painted during the renovation.

The only thing clear to him after more than a month of friendship is Ryou's loneliness, and the ever-growing desperation to kill it, if only for an hour.

"Summer holiday starts soon."

Ryou looks over a shoulder at him. "I'm sorry, you must have plans."

"I will if we make some." He waits for an indication but Ryou just blinks at him in confusion. He remembers him being friends with Yugi and vaguely wonders what happened. They seemed too close to have drifted apart, but Ryou's every word is calculated like it'll cripple the friendship if not aimed correctly. "If we hang out earlier we could get coffee or something, unless you have a better place in mind."

The real statement is obvious and as polite as he can make it: not here.

He doesn't mind this venue when he already has to be here, but making a special trip is tiresome even in theory. There are better places they can go, more things they can do to fill their time.

The knowing smile dawning Ryou's face sends the hair on the back of Mokuba's neck up.

"You don't scare easy, do you?"

Mokuba scoffs, "How could I?"

The sharpness flits across Ryou's features when he says, "I know a place."

* * *

 **July**

* * *

Ryou stands at the cemetery gate with his head in the clouds, and when he turns to Mokuba with that same owlish expression from the first day, the shiver finally works its way out.

"We should have come later; these places are always creepier after dark." Mokuba says, nodding as he steps through the gate. He's never thought about it until just now, but Ryou always lets him cross thresholds first.

"Spirits are very active here at night, best not to play with fire." It snags a memory of Battle City - occult monsters and spirit boards. An other-worldly realm that still whispers his name in his sleep. Mokuba almost makes an excuse to leave.

"Kind of a weird place to hang out in broad daylight."

"I thought you didn't scare easy?"

"I don't!" Mokuba almost shouts, blushing, "It just seems like a waste to get here and not see what it can do after dark." As soon as the words leave his mouth, he regrets them. They break down the wall of denial Seto spent five years helping him build, tearing through the illusion that the shadow realm was always Pegasus's trick. He sits down hurriedly when Ryou pats the bench and resists the urge to rub away the sensation of grotesque fingers on his ankles.

"I have nowhere else to be." Ryou agrees before he can take it back, "Let's stake it out."

Hours of eager conversation pass before Mokuba can hold onto a single word. Staying here in bright hours is no better than sneaking around in the dark. With the sticky heat of July clinging to him like a second skin, it feels like he's walking right up to the oven doors with his own body, waiting like the ghost Ryou resembles for ashes of himself.

At dusk, of all times, he pulls out of the stupor.

"Are you ready to see what it can do?"

His heart slams furiously in his chest, threatening to break through his ribcage if he doesn't draw the breath he desperately needs. He inhales no air, and no air, and no air, finally letting himself nod until he can suppress the panic attack.

Is this a panic attack?

The corners of his world go dark before Ryou puts a hand on his shoulder and his last thought before they plunge into darkness is: _I let it in_.

* * *

Everything comes into focus with a dull ache, evolving into burning the more he rouses from sleep. His shoulders feel like they're being ripped from the sockets. Rope cuts into his legs when he tries to move them…no….not rope.

He blinks the blurry outline of graves into reality and moans through the pain. Only his fingers are free enough to bend, nails scraping into the dirt, begging.

"Help…me."

The voice hushing tenderly above him is not Ryou's.

"Please!" He screams, "Please help me, I can't go back!"

Black vines multiply across his body, tight tethers to the cold, unyielding earth. The deeper he forces his fingers into the ground, the colder his entire being becomes. Rows of beating hearts ensnare him, a current of blood rushing loudly in his ears. Every spirit he's welcomed into sentience with the invitation to awaken calls his name at once. He imagines the terrible monsters of the shadow realm that made flesh of his soul just to shred it, but even those didn't come in so great a number.

They chorus his screams, their hearts beating stronger, clearer, hammering into his skin like a tattoo artist's needle, quickly, all precision lost to the relentless assault.

"I won't go!" He chokes; scream dying into a hoarse breath against the vines at his chest, snaking into his lungs, "You can't…scare me…anymore... You can't…do this."

A single finger slides along the jugular vein in his neck, dragging the heartbeats through his skin.

Hundreds of voices meld to one at the sight of Ryou's sharp eyes, "It's already done."

* * *

He wakes in his own bed, breathless and hot. It takes less than ten minutes for an internet search to turn up Ryou's phone number.

"What the _fuck_ was that!" He rasps, heavy breaths pulling through his chest, lifting his shoulders and spreading into shudders that grip even his voice.

"Mokuba? What's happened, what's the matter?"

"What did you do to me in that cemetery?"

"Mokuba," He says slowly, more stern now than confused, "There was a heat advisory, I haven't left my apartment all day."

The phone clatters to the floor, screen cracking lengthwise across the middle. "Hello? Are you okay? I think you're having a night terror Mokuba, can you hear me? Is anyone there with you?"

This time, because he needs to, because he can't drag Seto into this before he knows what it is, he lets himself believe Ryou's lie.

* * *

"It's almost two, kid, time to get up."

"I've been awake." Mokuba calls. Seto can hear the bed creak as he gets up to cross the room and opens the door just a little at first, then fully when Mokuba greets him with a confused smirk. He usually sleeps later than this when he stays up through the early morning.

"Want to grab lunch with me?"

"Can it be dessert?" Mokuba asks.

Seto shakes his head but says, "Sure, why not."

He gets Mokuba too much ice cream for even the pair of them and lets him eat it all to himself; waiting for a break in the exhaustion that's been lacing the boy's voice. He never sounds groggy, but deeply, echoingly tired. Seto realizes he never knew the difference before it stared him in the face.

The last handful of days in July he routinely breaks from work to walk the hall, always finding the light on under Mokuba's door. Days become a week, the hours spreading from midnight into two into four.

Mokuba's side of his bed has been cold for two years. There have been no nightmares in two years. He tells himself it's summer holiday and there's nothing wrong with movie or video game binges with friends. Mokuba can mix up his days and nights a little while longer.

But the boy is awake when he leaves for work, sometimes tapping his fingers against the same counter Seto uses, waiting for coffee to brew.

On the eleventh day his petrol of the hall is too quiet. He checks his phone twice – 3AM – and tries to settle into the relief that the kid's just been falling asleep with the light on.

He enters quietly to turn it off and finds Mokuba sitting at the corner of his bed, cradled by the wall, staring up at the ceiling light.

His phone is charging across the room. The laptop is on the desk.

"Are you okay?" He asks, closing the door to sit down.

"I'm fine, Niisama."

* * *

 **August**

* * *

"Please talk to me Mokuba."

The groan is thick with teenage irritation, "I keep telling you I'm fine. Why are we talking about it if you won't believe me?"

"You're not sleeping."

"I sleep plenty."

"When?"

There's a long pause on Mokuba's end while he tries to figure out what to say, and Seto lays a cautious hand on his shoulder. "I'm worried about you." He says, watching everything in the younger boy break as the words settle in. "If you're having nightmares, we can work through them."

Mokuba shrugs out of the touch and stares harder at the living room wall. A picture of his mother used to sit atop the bookshelf, but it's been moved to the coffee table between the couch and TV.

"I haven't had nightmares since I was a kid –" Seto's expression, though neutral, is practically shouting 'you're still a kid,' and it makes Mokuba's blood boil. "And _we_ aren't going to work through anything; you booked an appointment with a therapist and didn't even talk to me!"

"I booked a consultation for you to _meet_ a therapist if you wanted to, and told you I'd cancel if you didn't." Seto corrects.

"It's the same thing!"

"Mokuba." He doesn't face the sternness like he usually would and Seto wonders if that's out of anger or defeat. "I will call and cancel the appointment myself; I wasn't trying to go behind your back."

"Thank you."

He still won't look at him. "That doesn't mean I believe nothing is wrong. When you're ready to talk about it, I'm right here."

"I know, Niisama."

For the first time in sixteen years, the name is no consolation. It burrows in his chest like a bullet and leaves him pulling up bone fragments with every breath. When did things get so strained between them? How did they go from joking about the straight forward patterns of pre-calculus to staring at each other like strangers across a room, aching for closeness with their bodies at a distance?

Mokuba isn't even reciprocating; his baby won't even look at him.

"Let's go see that movie you're so excited for." _Don't stay angry with me._

"Maybe tomorrow, I have plans tonight."

In the terrible moments of hurt and desperation after the door closes, and before Mokuba's out of sight from the window, he wonders if it's drugs.

The very thought feels like such a betrayal he questions his own motives.

* * *

"Did you know mature ravens have 5,312 feathers?" Mokuba asks between bites of dessert. Seto's too busy making sure he eats well – he seems thinner and thinner – to fully process the question. The late epiphany of a biology lecture, he guesses.

"I didn't." He replies, "Is that on average?"

Mokuba shrugs and dabs a bit of brownie from the corner of his mouth with his tongue. "I didn't ask."

On the way home from the restaurant, Mokuba pretends to sleep and Seto pretends not to notice. He spent twelve beautiful years carrying the boy while he feigned sleep, knowing when it's real is an instinct that will probably never leave him. He sits in the driveway too long debating whether or not to walk around back and try to carry him in. It's not that he couldn't lift him – he'd carry Mokuba if they were 85 and 90 – but how angry and embarrassed Mokuba would be.

He's in a phase Seto understands less and less each day.

Every night he wonders if he's being too passive and every night he lets the crippling fear of losing Mokuba answer.

By the time he pulls himself out of the internal conflict, Mokuba's given up the act. He smooths his hair and retreats to the mansion, calling back, "That was fun, thanks Niisama."

His withdrawal is easy at first, sudden but understandable. New friends are filling time Seto used to occupy and when the worry creeps in - he's thinner, he doesn't sleep, this isn't Mokuba - Seto reminds himself these days were bound to come. There's one day left of summer when Mokuba grins, there's something off about his grin, with the mock announcement that he's cleared his schedule. The office keeps Seto too late the night before, but the giddiness of holding on to the bit of Mokuba not too embarrassed to hang out with him helps pass the time.

The motion light on the garage is delayed and he makes a mental note to tinker with it as he gets out of the car.

He stretches before walking the length of their unusually pungent asphalt driveway, taking the most direct path across the courtyard to the house. Twice his fingers flex with the instinct to draw his coat collar around his nose and mouth. Digging his phone from his pocket, he turns on the flashlight app and finds both shoes and the ground behind him clean. After less than a minute of dragging it over the lawn ahead, he finds the source.

A pink mass strewn brokenly in the grass, more bone than flesh. Seto steps closer, crouching down to inspect what he assumes to be the corpse of a rabbit drug off by a cat.

He finds, instead, the distinct curve of a wing nearly severed from the rest of the body, dried blood making rust of the grass. It twitches once, twice, and Seto closes his eyes before stepping down on it with a gruesome and merciful – _crack_.

* * *

 **September**

* * *

There's too little difference when Mokuba starts back to school, the house has grown used to the quiet and Seto resigns himself to it while he works from home. Sometimes he calls for Roland to hear his voice echo through the halls, a tangible testament of stillness.

It's not a passing thought or a nagging concern anymore, something is wrong with Mokuba.

Fact.

He repeats it to himself over and over, pacing the hall of their bedrooms with the doors closed – since when do they keep the doors closed? The weight of worry makes his footsteps clumsy - _too thin, not sleeping, sallow, sick_ \- he throws open Mokuba's bedroom door for a breath of normalcy. To feel the boy's life and light rebound off his chest and make him whole again.

The shock of finding a thick trail of black mold in the corner of the room is equal parts terror and relief. It's a potentially deadly infestation, but it explains Mokuba's moodiness, insomnia, withdrawal.

He packs their bags pending a cleaning crew the next morning and hands Mokuba half the luggage when he walks in from school.

"Where are we going?"

"There's black mold in the house and everything has to be deep cleaned to try and get rid of it. We're camping out in a hotel for a while."

"How did we get black mold?"

"Just happens sometimes, it likes damp places and this is an old house."

Mokuba's hesitance cuts Seto to the core, but he nods once, then again with more finality. "I'm gonna look over my room, make sure I don't leave anything."

"That's where the mold is, check everything you touch and wash your hands."

"There's no black mold in my room, I would have seen it."

"I don't know how we both missed it this long." He waves Mokuba back and nudges the door open with a foot, catching the boy when he stumbles backwards. "Mokuba!"

"I don't need anything else." He whispers hurriedly, "Let's just go."

Seto wraps an arm around him and ignores the grunt of protest while Mokuba is face-down in his phone. The name at the top of the text messages says more than it should.

'Ryou.'

* * *

The first week at the hotel is almost peaceful. Mokuba lies beside him in the king-size bed and Seto runs a hand through his long hair, stretching it down to the middle of his back as he combs through it.

"'M not a cat, Niisama." He mumbles, and the fatigue is so genuine Seto almost believes he was asleep. But everything about Mokuba is haunted, afflicted. The closer he is to him, the more keenly he feels unrest rising from his bones.

"You're growing a mane, kid."

That gets a smile he can trace in the curve of Mokuba's shoulders, and when he does, comes away with a long, white hair between his thumb and index finger.

When he finds three identical strands in Mokuba's dirty laundry while he's at school, he knows exactly where to head off the trouble before it goes any further.

What's a college junior doing with a high school freshman?

The anger builds as his phone rings, and he revels in it so long he doesn't realize the relentless noise is real. Until he picks up with a curt, " _Wha_ t _?_ "

"We're trying to get rid of the mold, sir, but it may take longer than expected."

"Is it that far in the walls?"

"No…as a matter of fact it's the strangest damn thing, we wipe it out in one room and it shows up in another."

Seto runs a hand through his hair to tame the frustration. He doesn't have time to address such lunacy, "Just call me when we can move back in." He orders, and hangs up without waiting for a reply.

There's no word the second week.

Nor the third.

But, by the time Seto sits down to tell Mokuba to stop hanging out with someone five years older, doing whatever secretive activities comprise "just hanging around," they get the all-clear to go home.

When Mokuba cheers for his own shower, he almost sounds like himself. But Seto offers to let him stay home from school the following day and he refuses like it's the easiest decision in the world. "Do you have tests?" He asks

"Just one in Human Growth and Development."

"That's a blow-off class." Seto says lightly, encouragingly. Mokuba shrugs and Seto watches the fabric of his clothing settle looser than it ever has before. "You always jump at the chance to stay home from school." He persists.

"And you always say classes you learn something in are created equal." Mokuba tries to smile, does smile, but it's empty.

Seto desperately presses a hand to his cheek, his fingertips drawing Mokuba's warmth and wondering how it's changed so much in just a few months. "Then I sound just like Mom." He relents, letting the concern through without badgering the boy about where he spends time after school, what Yugi's trouble-finding friend Ryou wants.

There's too much hope in Mokuba's eyes when he steps into a hug instead of pulling away to grab his backpack. Seto clings to it with every muscle in his body and resolves not to care if it's the last hug he gets before Mokuba turns eighteen.

Tonight he needs to start pressing harder about what's wrong.

Mokuba doesn't take a mental health day, but he does go in late to listen to tender stories of their mother, and in those precious moments of normalcy, pacifying Mokuba's obvious and unexplained fears, his own are quiet.

* * *

Leaving Mokuba at school is unnatural. Kaiba Corp isn't the same without him and the only place that doesn't breathe his absence is his bedroom. The bed is unmade and the wallpaper peeling up in a few places they cleaned thoroughly to get rid of the mold, but the biggest offense is being sans his little brother.

He sighs, looking through the books on Mokuba's shelf for anything new. There are thousands of words here to occupy his time but he flips through the pages in a few seconds, looking for scribbles or doodles in the margins and finding none he doesn't recognize. He makes the bed to busy his hands.

Mokuba's spending more time in his bedroom than ever before but there's nothing to indicate why. He presses a hand to the headboard and lets the cool wood coax him to full height.

"What the fuck?"

Spidery tendrils of black mold descend quickly from the ceiling, appearing right before his eyes. He reaches out a hand to touch it as it forms, trying to shake himself from the dream. It flakes off on his fingers, fuzzy and putrid, riddling the linens with dark confetti.

Not mold, lichen.

He lets out another string of curses as the plant moves onto the next wall and crouches down to look for its source under the bed. The flashlight on his phone has an awkward and limited angle in the narrow space but shows clean walls and baseboards. A chill spills over him as he moves the light from side to side, catching an old, wooden box he doesn't recognize.

It's smooth when he first grabs it to pull it out, but engravings appear as if by magic under the heat of his fingers. His hands won't open it, a knife won't open it.

"Useless." He growls, chucking it out into the hall. On impact, the latch he hadn't noticed under the small lip of the lid loosens.

Inside, he finds the corpse of a featherless raven.

* * *

"Niisama, I don't know what you're talking about!" Mokuba snaps defensively, tossing his backpack across the room.

"This isn't a joke Mokuba, where did you even find something like that?"

"I didn't!" He insists, mortified, "I love animals Seto; you can't just make this shit up because you're worried! I told you I'm fine, it's one thing not to trust that but to go snooping through my room? Inventing reasons to back up the hassle? This is just sick."

He takes Mokuba's arm and sits him firmly in a kitchen chair, "We're going to talk about this."

"Why don't you listen for once!" Mokuba screams, voice shaking, "I can handle this on my own; I just need some space! We haven't dissected anything in biology since last quarter; I don't even have a "box" like the one you're talking about! If I tell you I'm fine it's because I want you to leave me alone – _for once_." He repeats the words to try and tame the anger but it doesn't and when Seto tries to interrupt he scoots back in the chair so forcefully it moves the entire table out of his way.

"I don't want you around Yugi's friend anymore." Seto says, forcing himself to be calm.

"I don't care what you want; you can't tell me who to hang out with! If you've decided not to trust me after sixteen years of never lying to you, and supporting you no matter what anyone else says, I guess I can't change that, but you've barely even _met_ Ryou!"

"I trust you fully Mokuba - I've never stopped trusting you. And I believe you feel you can't tell me what happened because I'll be disappointed or upset or- we're not done talking about this."

"All this because I can't sleep?" Mokuba rasps, swallowing down the night-terrors bridging into daydreams bridging into reality, "Why can't you just cut me a break?" Before he realizes, he's started to cry, "Just leave me alone."

The halls are quiet, too many straying eyes turning back to their supposed tasks when Mokuba skips his room and heads for Seto's.

He takes the wooden box and throws it repeatedly against the floor. One, two, three, four – it breaks open beyond repair and Mokuba kicks it into Seto's dresser hard enough to chip the wood of the drawer.

"You really bought a box?" He asks, desperate sobs pulling through his chest, shaking Seto's arm when it wraps around him to calm him down. "To back up the lie?"

He tries to struggle free and screams when Seto sits down on the bed, pinning him there too. "Mokuba-"

"Where is your corpse, Seto? Where is the dead bird?" He rips free, taking off down the hall while Seto watches in horror.

He hadn't discarded it – the only way to get rid of the smell would be to get rid of the whole box – but it's gone. "Mokuba-"

"Just stay away from me! And stay away from Ryou too!"

* * *

Ryou's honeyed voice hums apologies like none he's heard before and danger buzzes on his tongue when he laps them up.

"I don't know why he'd lie about something like that, it's not like…he's never…" His voice cracks, letting Ryou in deeper, bony fingers pressing just below his shoulder in a one-armed hug.

"He loves you, but he's always been able to read you before. He's afraid of what he doesn't understand." The words are entrancing and serene; a ladder down from the raging crescendo of pain and betrayal. When the fair haired boy starts rubbing his arm, danger dances like flies in his mouth. The back of his throat waters, moisture rising to his eyes again like he might cry.

Mokuba takes a deep breath, somewhere between nourished and nauseous.

"Have I ever told you the difference between crows and ravens?"

The question blankets him in the static lull of stories, "No." He whispers, hoping against all hope that Ryou will keep crooning on.

His voice is the only one to drown out the screams. The whispers. The calling.

"A crow's tail feathers grow straight across, while a raven's taper out in a kind of 'u' shape." He traces the ends of Mokuba's hair, a dark curve against his shirt. "There's nothing more beautiful, really."

* * *

 **October**

* * *

Desperation has a vice grip on the mansion; it rattles the windows and slams the doors. Black lichen overtakes the walls just to vanish with the closing of one's eyes. Blink, there. Blink, gone.

"I really don't think it's wise to stay here, Mr. Kaiba."

"This is just another cheap trick and I'm going to figure out how he rigged it."

Seto flips the light off in the hall, listening to the eager whisper of the plant stalking forward, "There's got to be a way to trip the sensor." A flash of light dissolves the talons stretching out like a death-sentence. When he and Roland plunge back into darkness, the growing, like a hundred tiny voices cooing to prey, resumes with palpable vengeance.

On.

Off.

On.

Off.

They play until the bulb burns out and Mokuba's screams pierce the air, " _You're not welcome here! You're not welcome here, you're not weLCOME HERE!"_

He can't get to the room fast enough, falling to his knees and bringing the boy to his chest, head pressed to his shoulder, nuzzling into his neck. When the truth comes out, Seto feels it split his heart like an angry fist, squeezing until his entire being seizes.

For the briefest of moments he wishes it was drugs or mold or bullying, anything but an echoing drawl of madness he can't see to wring the neck of.

"Okay, Mokie, okay." He whispers, "I'm right here, I'll put an end to this." He pulls him away long enough to meet his eyes, "I promise."

"Seto, you can't, it'll take you!" Mokuba chokes, "This is why I didn't tell you, I'm the one who did it, I'm the one it wants!"

"Mokuba," He says sternly, "Do you trust me?"

"More than anyone, Niisama."

Warm lips pressed to hot foreheads are their own sort of vow, one that's stared down hundreds of demons just to slit the organs from their bellies.

Love ignites in Mokuba's veins, drumming out the fear while he shows Seto hundreds of bookmarks on his laptop.

Hundreds.

He's been in agony all this time.

"I've been having these…visions. I know they're not dreams because they happen all the time. I didn't stop driving to school because there was nowhere to park; I stopped driving because they've run me off the road."

" _What?!_ "

"Sorry, Niisama."

He flips tabs expertly, with more exhaustion anchored in one finger than Seto has felt in his whole life. Years of merciless conditioning under Gozaburo march through his thoughts, and he hates that he can write them in the lines of Mokuba's tired face.

He's failed him already.

"When I ended up in the cemetery-"

"When he drug you there."

"He was in his apartment all day."

"You told me you were going to meet him before you left, I don't believe a word of this internet nonsense, but that kid's involved in whatever sick joke he thinks this is."

"When I ended up in the cemetery," Mokuba repeats firmly, "I said I wanted to see what it could do. I invited these…these spirits into our house."

"You made a vague statement, not a declaration of the zombie apocalypse."

"I'm serious, Seto!" Mokuba's desperation re-initiates the hug they'd broken to devour his research.

"I'm sorry, keep going."

"The lichen is a sign. Not a sign, really, but it's…how they take you. It's the only thing that grows from the dark realm to ours without a vessel in both."

It sounds about as plausible as the boogeyman, but this isn't the place for his skepticism, "So we'll move, get away from it."

Mokuba, anticipating the reply, holds up a picture on his cracked phone. The hotel room, total darkness except the flash of the camera, covered in thick, dark strands.

The frown practically carves itself into Seto's face. How did Ryou know which hotel they were staying in? Was he tracking them – _stalking_ Mokuba?

A watery voice interrupts his thoughts, "We can't."

"Mokuba-"

"It follows."

* * *

He finds him at the schoolyard, in the grocery store, on the street. Every tear Mokuba cries over this is a condition of his oath, a resource to be sure Ryou Bakura never feels safe again.

When he makes his way into the apartment during the boy's routine stakeout of Domino High, the first thing he does is smear black greasepaint over the photographs. In the living room, nightstand drawers, boxes under beds, atop the shrine to a dead mother and sister.

Not safe, not safe, not safe.

The place is pitch black and alive with the current of his anger when Ryou steps through the door at a quarter after three. He throws his body back against the entryway when the light comes on, pressing a hand over his mouth in shock.

"Kaiba," He breathes, "You scared me to death –" he looks halfway to death's door already – "How did you… _why_ are you here?"

"I don't know what sick game you're trying to pull but I'm done playing it. Stay away from Mokuba."

"I don't know what you're talking ab-" Seto's fist connects hard with the side of his face, knocking his head back against the wall with enough force to crack the plaster. Ryou sputters, blinks heavily through the pain and confusion, body growing rigid like a puppeteer is tightening his muscles on a wire. "Kaiba, please –"

"Cut the meek act, you've been digging around his trauma for months now. He may be trusting enough to fall for your paranormal nonsense while you lick the salt from his wounds but I wasn't born yesterday. The next step you take near my property will be your last."

Ryou's lips twitch into something like a smirk, arm shooting out like a viper for Seto's drawn-back fist. His grip settles with such force Seto half expects the bones in his scrawny arm to shatter, splintering into his blue-black veins until he bleeds out. If Mokuba were here he'd say the strength wasn't human. The boy steps closer, forcing Seto back one pace, two, until neither of them are pinned to the wall anymore.

The laughter shaking panes of glass across the room is nightmarish.

"He's opened a gate, mortal. Your threats fall on deaf ears."

"I don't care what dark magic you've dreamed up, leave Mokuba out of it."

Five fingers dig into Seto's chest, ripping through his shirt without disturbing the fabric, like individual blades of rotting flesh and bone, "Is that an offer to take his place?" His eyes are too liquid-dark, the creature in front of him doesn't blink.

"Any threat you think you're ready to levy goes through me."

It's supposed to be Gozaburo Kaiba staring back, breaking the firm hold on his wrist without touching the one on his chest, but Bakura is ensnared by something different entirely.

He ghosts his lips over Seto's forehead before throwing him back toward the door.

"A promise," He purrs, "How interesting. It's been too long since I've tasted something so sweet."

* * *

Bakura's filthy touch invades his blood and multiplies. He can feel it crawling like the lichen, needful and hungry. The traffic light refuses to change and he's been sitting in front of it too long trying to tame the spiders under his skin while Mokuba sits alone – with Roland, he knows, but he might as well be alone.

He races the sun across the horizon and arrives home too long after nightfall, dazed and drunk on dying adrenaline he wasted on a pacifist child. Ryou's all talk and head games. He and the dweeb patrol belong together.

The door slams, harsh, echoing, and he crosses the lawn without breathing. He doesn't want to know what corpses the boy left lying around this time.

"Hey kid, I'm ho-me."

The warm arms encasing him split the word in two and Seto leans into the embrace to hold them close, "I missed you."

"I'm not going anywhere, I promise."

But the look of slowly fading horror on Mokuba's face is enough to make him keep a light on in the dark. They hunker down with bodies entangled in blankets and sheets, stark white lights blazing from both nightstands and the ceiling.

Neither of them can eat.

Every few minutes they squeeze hands and brush shoulders, staring at the TV screen without watching the movies and silently listening to each other breathe.

Seto doesn't know when he drifts to sleep or how long he's out, but when he shimmies – carefully, carefully – out of Mokuba's bed to use the bathroom, the younger is snoring softly.

The walls in the dark bathroom are bare; Seto uses only the light coming in through the window in case Ryou is waiting to trigger whatever mechanism the lichen runs on.

When he doesn't, Seto calls it a victory.

Crossing the hall, he can't help but grimace at the unfamiliar blanket he'd been sleeping under. How had he crawled into bed without noticing it?

When he tries to peel back the too-soft fabric, he comes away with a handful of white feathers in varying sizes. A quick scan of the pillows reveals no snags or tears; they're labeled cotton anyway, but how else would…

He shakes his head, glances down to the fragments of a dream between his fingers, and finds them stark black in his hold.

The ones covering the bed are white, untouched, pure. When he pulls them off in handfuls, they change from black to gray, going up in wisps of smoke and reappearing as if untouched.

White like the sheets under Mokuba's olive skin.

White the Ryou's foul touch.

Mokuba sleeps deeply even under the weight of Seto's eyes, and he steps out just long enough to wash his face with frigid water to convince himself this isn't real.

The lichen is gone, so it must have been Ryou. The illusions – not hallucinations, he's not crazy – are just the result of stress. They'll fade with time. Things will go back to normal again.

Among his own reassuring, rational voice, dozens of foreign tremors trickle in, vibrations that evolve into voices the closer he is to Mokuba, filling in the chorus of Hallelujah with nothing but the word "amnesty."

* * *

 **November**

* * *

When the house breathes low and warm against his cheek, Seto flexes his fingers into Mokuba's and presses their wrists together. They sleep heartbeat to heartbeat, fingers interlaced at the edges, knuckles grazing their hips or propped on their pillows while they face each other.

Every hour on the hour he hears the voices, and every time he opens his eyes he whispers, "Please…" adjusting his wrist to feel Mokuba's pulse.

The warm trail of breath on his nose is Mokuba's, and he knows as soon as the thought passes his mind that things will never be the same. It smells like chocolate instead of death, and for the briefest moment, instinctively, desperately, he wishes for it to stay.

* * *

Seto blinks his eyes open to a forest of black tendrils, breathing but lifeless. Mokuba's heartbeat is gone and he screams for him until the words dry out. The only light glows dull under his feet, following his footsteps along the cracked, white path.

"Bakura." He rasps, throat raw with the remnants of Mokuba's name, but there's no answer.

Coward.

Worthless _fucking_ coward.

Seto kicks a wall of lichen and jerks away when it wraps tightly around his leg, crawling to the knee before he severs it with bare hands. It stains the beds of his nails black and he thinks about it while he runs in circles. No doors, no windows, just the same bleak corridor. For hours he runs, sometimes through the vines, letting them grab and shake the life out of him until he's almost unconscious, sometimes keeping to the clear path.

There is no beginning.

There is no end.

Just one infinity unto another in an endless loop of hell.

His legs buckle halfway through a lap and when the floor comes rushing up to meet him, it's all he can do to brace himself so he doesn't hit face first.

But he doesn't stay down.

"I see you've discovered how to keep yourself fit for me." Bakura drawls from behind, "Let's see how long it takes to bring you back to your knees."

"What is this place?" Seto snaps, turning on Bakura with visceral fury. The fair haired creature doesn't have to step away, the hall stretches to recreate the distance between them.

It will until Bakura is ready.

"Your people call it purgatory."

"Hell." Seto provides, laugh bitter and dry.

"Oh no," Bakura says darkly, "You know nothing of hell."

The hall drags Seto back three paces for every sprinting stride he takes, his eyes glued to the spot Bakura disappears though with a strange and otherworldly ripple.

The resounding threat has nothing on Mokuba's heartbeat. When Seto's presses his wrists together hard enough, he can still feel it echo through his veins.

* * *

There's no sense of time in this place, no shift in light, or sound, or growth, - and the lichen is always growing. He tracks minutes mentally, with precision, when he falls into sleep he has no choice but to continue where he left off.

He chews one fingernail, stained black and noxious with the taste of decay, every time he can reasonably assume a day has passed. The gnawing ache in his stomach grows with every slither, every subtle vibration, he doesn't know how long he's been without food but it's longer than he was able to ration under Gozaburo.

The wall of vegetation is thick, mocking, but he dips his head back and wrings it out, black liquid tricking into his mouth.

With a violent twist, his stomach rejects it, purging puddles of yellow bile.

After seventeen days of this – he counts seventeen but it could just as well be seven, it could just as well be thirty – he can drink without what feels like dislodging his organs.

He writes Mokuba's name in the gaps of plants he wrings dry, but they're overgrown a minute later. Wrist to wrist, heartbeat to heartbeat, desperation buzzing around his head.

Every passing moment, Mokuba's heart gets weaker under his skin.

Seto traces his name into the path until it's written in the blood of his chafed fingertips.

His entire being cries out for reprieve, offering himself to the plants that crawl curiously over his limp form, not squeezing, not suffocating, like they know.

 _Like they know._

Loneliness pulses where Mokuba used to be, through transparent skin oozing bluish-black veins. Everything he can still feel, from the pit of his stomach to the depths of his soul, is an unyielding, unbearable hunger.

* * *

 **December**

* * *

The world evolves sharply and without pause: from endless, unfathomable famine to bright, clear, pain.

Fire licks at his toes and chars his shoulders, funneled into every screaming synapses of his body. He can't see the source of the heat pulling everything he is into needle-thin paths and tearing through them, but the laughter that rebounds is so terribly familiar he forces himself into oblivion.

Bakura underestimates the power of his spite, but not for long.

Lichen tattoos itself into every vein of Seto's body, pumping out his blood in a crimson ooze against black. He becomes one with the wall while the spirit waits.

For some reason these meager hours stretch longer than three thousand years.

Ryou's desperate whimper is rewarded with the freedom of a flesh-eaten hand, reaching out for Seto and coming up short. They are two bodies here, and Yami snaps his host's fingers for the very thought of betrayal.

There is only one force greater, and as the needle goes in clean through Seto's lips, blue eyes wide-open and screaming, he finally – _finally_ – puts his finger on it.

Licking black sludge from the corner of Seto's mouth is so satisfying his entire body shudders with need.

"Your promises are sweet but your regret is divine."

He kisses each stitch, waiting for the first feast of fear to settle.

Only then does he pull Seto down, bound but writhing, to fulfill the rest of his desires.

 **.**

 **.**

 **.**

Fin.


End file.
